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ABOUT THIS IMAGE:

With the combined power of NASA's Spitzer and Hubble space telescopes, as well as a cosmic
magnification effect, astronomers have spotted what could be the most distant galaxy ever seen.
Light from the primordial galaxy traveled approximately 13.2 billion light-years before reaching
NASA's telescopes, shining forth from the so-called cosmic dark ages when the universe was just
3.6 percent of its present age.

Astronomers relied on gravitational lensing to catch sight of the early, distant galaxy. In this
phenomenon, predicted by Albert Einstein a century ago, the gravity of foreground objects warps
and magnifies the light from background objects.

In the big image at left, the many galaxies of a massive cluster called MACS J1149+2223
dominate the scene. Gravitational lensing by the giant cluster brightened the light from the
newfound galaxy, known as MACS1149-JD, some 15 times, bringing the remote object into
view.

At upper right, a partial zoom-in shows MACS1149-JD in more detail, and a deeper zoom
appears to the lower right. In these visible and infrared light images from Hubble, MACS1149-
JD looks like a dim, red speck. The small galaxy's starlight has been stretched into longer
wavelengths, or "redshifted," by the expansion of the universe. MACS1149-JD's stars originally
emitted the infrared light seen here at much shorter, higher-energy wavelengths, such as
ultraviolet.

The far-off galaxy existed within an important era when the universe transformed from a starless
expanse during the dark ages to a recognizable cosmos full of galaxies. The discovery of the
faint, small galaxy opens a window onto the deepest, remotest epochs of cosmic history.